A Sleeping Phantom's Heartbeat
by Nobody419
Summary: Danny almost made is back to the motel room unnoticed. Exhausted and wet, he has to deal with coming up with an excuse for his cousin, Danielle. Rated for language (the F-bomb is in there). Cute cousin fluff.


**Hey glorious world! I'm a big fan of Danny Phantom so here we go! Cute adorableness between Danielle and Danny. I also don't own Danny Phantom (or it would still be airing new episodes each week) or any of the references I made near the end. *wink**

**Enjoy!**

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"So close, Danny."

Even in the darkness, radioactive green eyes dangerously pierced the darkness—glowing unnaturally—before with a click a lamp flickered to life. The electric green was replaced with icy blue orbs that penetrated the busted man's eyes. He cringed idiotically under her glare, visibly shuddering as the girl cocked her eyebrow, prompting an explanation or an excuse. Even under the shaggy black bangs that covered her right eye, her glower was deadly.

"Aw, damn it." He swore.

Admittedly, Danny's night had not been going as well as he had hoped—both for Fenton and for Phantom. Having to sneak back into the motel room on the rainy night was not one of his proudest moments, not to mention his uncanny relationship with Murphy's Law which added insult to injury; bottom line, he had been caught—worse, he was in the middle of pulling his pants off, trying vainly to change out of his denim and into his sweats, so his cousin caught him boxer-ed and in his hoodie.

Danny winced, trying for an apologetic smile. "Uh, hey Danielle…" the words were dragged slowly, high pitched with embarrassment. It took only a second for the smile to fade and his face to crease with worry at the unimpressed look Danielle shot him.

For a half awake Halfa the girl looked lethal—even in an oversized t-shirt and with disheveled hair, which was hard to accomplish when the shirt had a smiling stick figure and the phrase "Life is Good" beneath him. The cheap motel room was bathed in gold light from the lamp, illuminating the mess of clothing and the two duffle bags scattered on the floor along with the disheveled bed sheets and comforter. For a second the sixteen year old kept Danny hostage under her glare. By comparison, however, her next gaze was worse. The anger on her face faded as the creases disappeared—Danielle just looked tired, her young face suddenly worn and weathered. "Danny…" she sighed. "Come on…you promised…no ghostly stuff while we were on the trip." She didn't sounded pissed—as much—anymore; she just sounded betrayed.

Sagging out of his defensive position Danny shrugged off the hoodie he had already been in the process of taking off and started to yank on his sweat pants. "Aw, Dani, don't be like that…" he protested vainly. He awkwardly hopped into his slacks and over to Dani as she stared tiredly at him. "I mean, there was this…mugging and…then Skulker was there…"

She waved off his argument halfheartedly. "Danny, I'm sure you had a great reason…" she grumbled. "But, come on, cuz…" she complained. "We only get two weeks of just you and me on the road, flying around and looking for fun. I kinda hoped you'd actually wake me up next time there's fun." She smiled gently at him in a display of her forgiveness.

Giddy with relief, Danny sagged against the headboard of his motel bed—wincing in the process and silently praying that Dani hadn't noticed; of course Dani noticed.

"Danny…" she began dangerously, her voice sharp with concern. "What happened?" her demand left no room for a half assed reply.

Ignoring the mental warning, Danny mumbled a near inaudible excuse under his breath along the lines of "Nothing really. It's no big deal. Gun didn't even hurt…much." A rabbit punch to his aching ribcage made Danny double over in pain as a sharp intake of air signaled an above average amount of pain.

Rolling her eyes at his stupidity Dani made her way over to one of the duffels digging around for a first-aid kid. "Jesus Fuck, Danny, if you get hurt just say so," She snapped as, much to Danny's embarrassment, she continued to hurl various undergarments and t-shirts across the room. He cringed as a bra landed on the bed, dangerously close to his leg. "No, Danny, I don't have ecto cooties," Danielle teased as she rose with the first aid kit. "What broken?" she asked shortly, clearly not in the mood for anymore of Danny's politician-like evasion of straight answers and throwing proper grammar and sentence structure out the window casually.

Falling back into their standard bandaging routine, Danny ran a self-diagnostic as he tugged his shirt off. Despite his discomfort with Dani's blunt behavior regarding her bras and underwear, he and Danielle had been patching each other up for about two years now and any awkwardness had long since evaporated. He began to complain about his dislocated shoulder as Dani turned on a Coldplay playlist on her iPod and began to rub disinfectant on the irritated, red scratched that hadn't quite sealed up yet. A moment of silence passed as adrenaline left Danny exhausted and Danielle busied herself affectionately fixing her big cousin.

Finally, a childish grin pulled the corners of Dani's lips back and she shot a glance up at Danny who, sensing her gaze, cracked an eyelid open.

"What?"

"Are you going to tell me about the fight?" The excitement had already made hardened Danielle's voice go higher and she was pleading him with her eyes to entertain her.

A finely tuned invisible understanding passed between the two half ghosts before Danny began to tell the story, assuming a tone the mirrored a professional story tellers as he related the events. "So, I'm about to get ready for bed when I see this green flash by the window," he began, keeping his voice low as he softly started to build suspense and gesturing to the horribly floral pattern curtains that framed their window. "And a green flash is never just a neon sign or anything for us…" he added, his eyes glinted with mischief as he brought out the child in his cousin. "Anyways, I go over to the window and peek out of the blind and guess who's out there, proclaiming himself as the best ghost hunter in all of the ghost zone?" He leaned closer, ignoring the tugging pain in his side by doing so. "Skulker!" the proclamation was practically dripping with cheese as Danny's eyes widened in mock terror.

Playing along Danielle let out a melodramatic gasp of horror, before smiling as resuming her bandaging while he resumed his story. She listened with greedy ears as he recounted a dramatized version of his ghost fight with Skulker, refusing to cringe as he emphasized the story with a shadow punch and dawning a heroic scowl of determination. As he continued, Dani taped a cool compress to the bruise on his ribcage, relocated his shoulder—made satisfying with an undignified yelp from her heroic Ghost Child cousin—and bound his left ankle; the injuries would be gone by morning thanks to the super-natural healing factors their DNA gave them.

Yet, slowly his words were slurring and his gestures losing their energy. The drumming rain outside the horrible, floral curtains and the soothing sounds of Fix You by Coldplay was slowly resurfacing his exhaustion. Danielle was unfazed when his words finally died off and were replaced by soft snores, tying off the bandage around a particularly deep scratch on his right bicep before she was finally satisfied with her work. Tired herself, Dani took a moment to enjoy her cousin's presence, brushing her bangs from where they annoying dangled in her field of vision so she could study her not unattractive cousin.

Thick headed Danny Fenton didn't seem to understand how much their two weeks together meant to Danielle; as a teenager who travelled the world alone most of the year she had begun to resent the loneliness that gnawed at her insides daily. Granite, there were a few people she enjoyed returning to: a woman named Helen who ran a roadside bar with her daughter Jo, a guy named Clint she'd run into on her first trip to Budapest and a kid on a bus named Percy—he had eyes like Danny, bright and deep blue, and an acquired level of sassiness that was unrivalled. But no matter the interesting people she had met she always preferred Danny's company; the wonderfully simple, unquestioning bond, the understanding that required no words, and the unconditional kindness.

Dani, letting her fingers drift and inspect a scar slashed across Danny's collarbone from a fight with the Fright Knight. A familiar resentment tightened her jaw; they should be too young. She and Danny shouldn't have had to fight the monsters of the world for the adults and shouldn't have had to come out of the fights with so many scars. She still refused to reveal the vivisection—or was it dissection—scar that the Guys in White had mutilated her with to Danny. Her eyes began to sting as her silent thoughts churned up bitter emotions.

And then, Danny sighed. Yanked back into reality, Danielle raised her eyes. Her cousin's head had drooped and his equally messy black bangs covered his eyes but Dani could see a small, contented smile on his face. The contagious grin brought a small smirk to Dani's worn face. Danny made it worth it; he had proven to her time and time again that there were humans out there that were worth saving, regardless of the fear, the anger—there was always someone worth saving.

With delicate fingers Dani lowered him from where he was awkwardly propped against the headboard so that his head was resting against the pillow. Tucking Danny in with affection that paralleled that of a mother Danielle flicked the light switch and lowered the volume on her playlist, allowing it to continue shuffling. Then, on impulse, she crawled under the covers with Danny, curling against him with her head resting on his chest. Warm content spread through her body, easing the dull ache of loneliness. Dani's head pulsed with the slow and steady heartbeat as she felt his chest expand and contrast under her, equally rhythmic. Danielle lived for these moments of perfection and fell asleep listening to the rain, his heartbeat and Coldplay.

_And I will try…to fix you…_


End file.
